When I read an article like
‘Homeless coder’ saga shows connections matter more than coding skills, I become angry, but not for reasons one might suspect. My anger has to do with the vast wide-scale ignorance of journalists and everyday people about the nature of computer programming, or more specifically, what it might mean to me. I don't think I am able to articulate the deep hatred I have in my heart toward the Machinery of Systemic Stupidity, with their sports arenas and car shows.
I have never once tried to create some kind of "app" which would appeal to the gorts. The gorts, including those gorts who consider themselves savvy and well-connected professionals, most likely are incapable of appreciating beautiful and mathematically elegant "command line programs."
The guy who created Funtoo Linux uses it as an experimental lab and spends most of his life at the command line. He is not in the least bit concerned with the "100% GUI ecosystem" and this tendency for environments to mimic the "feel" of the "mobile app experience."
[Warning: the following may seem like a "run on sentence," but I will try to use grammatical tools to express the thoughts anyway I can.]
No matter the depth of my understanding, the detail of the comments in my code meant for assisting any cognizant human being who actually cared to understand what is going on in the code, nor the internal subjective transformations taking place within me, which are a direct consequence of spending day after day focusing on the abstract realms of symbolic algebra and computing, the refusal of my "work" to commodify itself promises to land me on the streets unless there really is some merciful Overlord that can swoop me up into the Dessert where I might spend the remainder of my days trying to make some sense out of my life.
So many might suggest getting involved with an Open Source Project. All of this stinks of "posturing to legitimitize oneself as a "programmer." I only want to be s servant of my Muse, and to toil where she commands!
Were I homeless and one were to offer to "teach me how to create an app to sell for $1 per download," I would be frustrated to comical proportions. My radical and deeply philosophical approach to life has also been my approach to the craft of computer programming. Also, I tend to think as an individual while coding. Not everyone who wishes to learn how to program computers aspires to create useful "apps" to help the gorts navigate their ways through Bizarroland and order Rice-on-Demand.
Some of us have our heads in the clouds and intend to keep them there.
I choose to studay Stroustrup rather than Kant. Yes, at the end of the day, I have quietly got up from the table in the cafe where Cioran is going on and on about the horror of existence, and I have allowed myself to continue to learn about "modern C++" and this style of programming called "generic algorithm-oriented" which is supported by the STL.
The nature of our existences are subject to change drastically at any moment, and our lives would be in such a state where concentration would be difficult, and then, feeling defeated, we might recall the fateful proclamations made back at the cafe by our soul brother EM Cioran.
No one ever talks about the difficulties of living, and if programming is reduced to a trick one pulls off to sell apps for $1 per download, then no one will be surprised by my reluctance to be refered to as a "coder" or "programmer" or "hacker." I am thoroughly disgusted with this world and will no longer politley hide my understanding simply to spare feelings of others.
Fuuck what sells! I experience an existential crisis upon waking. I'm hooked on coffee and really must have that tobacco, please - out of the way! - as soon as the coffee kicks in. Somebody might offer me a mercy killing, but I would prefer a room in a monastary up in the mountains where I could live as a genuinely non-religious mathematically-and-philosophically-inclined computing monk ... Pipe Dream ...
As long as I am interested in the code I am writing and the libraries I am learning to use, then the world can continue on its way, with Ignorance parading itself around as Authority. I watch as little TV as possible. I am resigned to accept the contmept and disdain this society has for the likes of me.
I'll be returning to study, for this is the most precious thing I can do while dwelling in a stable environment.
This world is a frightening place where ignorance parades itself around as authority, claiming to "teach," yet usually teaching skills geared at commodification.
Holden hinted at something when mentioning the difficulties Van Gogh had in selling any of his "work."
Schopenhauer mentions this phenomenon frequently, or at least once, that our approach to a subject should be out of love for the subject itself.
Holden, Raul, Silenus, Ibra - I have woken up an angry and bitter man, but this may be rooted in the growing awareness that my entire existence, including all that I consider "worth studying," is mocked by the Machinery of Society. If I am to find any peace or solace, it muct come from the reminder that I may end my life whenever I wish.
Were I to be forced back into the homeless community, I would daydream of monastaries set up to educate those who desire education, at whatever level ... and the education would not be geared towards the inane and stupid tastes of those who decide what kind of interfaces the masses will be using on their gort-phones.
I am too angry at this world to try to fidure out how to squeeze a buck out of it. I will study in my solitary manner and try to ignore the fact that some of us will simply fail to ever be "connected" in any way ... except to the subject at hand.
To be a philosophical programmer who finds the idea of putting together a resume pointless, a real bother.
Holden, you must see the situation I am in. Please do remind me that my understanding is more valuable than any "connections" to "the industry."
I have to say, my main task, upon witnessing the nature of this society, is to try to remain out of any of its institutions or the many group homes where we disenfranchised serfs are organized into "cells."
I might prefer homelessness and even death over living with strangers in group homes, getting shuffled about to "day programs."
This world is so unappealling to me.
I'll study what I can, leave some notes and some code, then see what it feels like to croak.
There's no way around that for any of us, whcih makes us all Natural Born Philosphers.
Oh, how I do despise the gort masses. They murder me with their stupidity.
Meanwhile I am this ridiculous ape in need of food and water. No matter what particular knowledge or skills one develops, even if those skills are something as practical as "wilderness survival," one wakes up in these Dark Cities in whatever situation one finds oneself in, and that is that. We each have gotten a feel for the nature of our societies. We know this world is not pleasant. It's a very dangerous world, after all.
How to keep one's head together? How to find shelter while keeping one's soul in tact?
What kind of world is this? It's a world overflowing with charlatans and con-artists. Object-oriented programming was a hoax. The industry published countless books, authored by countless phony "professionals."